This invention relates to a wheel bearing spacer for automobiles. The invention as described and claimed was designed and intended for racing automobiles, but could be used on any vehicle. The spacers save shop time in setting up hub assemblies when preparing a racing vehicle for a race. The spacers includes shims which permit exact tolerances to be easily and repetitively achieved.
As is well known, both front and rear automobile wheel hub assemblies include tapered, caged roller bearings which permit low-resistance rotation between the wheel hub and the spindle (front assembly) and the axle (rear assembly). In both street and racing vehicles the roller bearings rotate against tapered races fitting into shoulders in the wheel hub. In street vehicles, the roller bearing housings themselves may rotate to some degree as well as the roller bearings in the housings. This is ordinarily not a problem. In racing vehicles, however, rotation of the bearing housing itself can cause serious damage due to the extreme speeds and related abuse imposed on the wheels as a result of heating of the spindle or axle by contact with the bearing housing.
One prior art solution was to insert a single-sized spacer around the spindle or axle to put a desired amount of axial compression on the inner and outer bearing housings to keep them stationarily seated against the races. This did not account for minor variations in bearing dimensions and tolerances.
Another prior art solution was to use a spacer with a shim positioned on the front face of the spacer. While better tolerances could be obtained in principle, tightening the spacer into resulting in bending and crimping of the shims.
The present invention solves these problems.